Job Adjustments and Additions Part I (07/03/2009)

[Meko]

on topic... Nin originally was not intended to tank. People figured it out and eventually SE made it more viable with additions and updates to it. These new updates dont seem to far off yet. Practical applications aside... Once the update happens and Nin try these out we will have better idea.

slightly off topic... was not so long ago Pld were left out of stuff due to nin. So when it reverses we have Pld being ok and nin not so good people gripe. I guess it is expected since when Nin were the choice Pld griped as well. My personal preference when i leveled blm pre-cop and even during was Pld tank. They could keep hate off me better. I cant even count as high as the exp loss i had from shitty Nin tanks. I'll admit sometime was my mistake for going chernobyl but mostly was due to lazy, cheap nin.

off topic... Blm i feel should get some new toys. I say this cause i have been playing it since NA release of game and can tell you the little nerfs and tweaks over the years added up to the point where its a pain. End game blm of pretty much anything 50-60 plus is solo/manaburn/campaign for exp. I hate manaburns... soloing is so time consuming and boring so it leaves me with campaign.

Something like a few new spells... better mp conserve stuff and -enmity would be nice. Plus adding more mobs that blm can kill for exp. Unless you have played blm a long time i dont think you really have much room to speak about the job. We have some nice stuff but are severely limited. We can do more than what people want... even more so if it not targeted at spell mimicking tucan/flamingo.

screw you tucamingoes!

ToA has certainly misshapen the Ninja job a little bit. Because of the high melee parties and the SAM train that has been going on, Ninja has been able to be slack in exp. Pre-ToA, doing Bibiki Bay as a taru ninja was no easy task. With goblin rush and the dhalmel stomp along with the 'absorbed shadows reduce hate' nerf, things were rough. One mistake would be death. In regards to the NIN update, I am optimistic but doubtful. I hope the class becomes viable aside from a subjob. I would really like to see the katana skill become A+. I think that would help with exp/merit burn type setups.

[Stellar]

I own a Kikoku so my Ninja obviously deals more damage than the overall majority, but a Senji / Perdu Nin that's geared very well and merited won't fall far behind the other damage dealers in a merit party. Considering a good number of players don't play their job to its maximum potential (some play their jobs horribly), a good Nin would have no problem keeping up with damage in the majority of merit parties. With Kikoku I'm about on par with well geared and merited War's, Sam's and Mnk's. Those exceptionally geared will pull ahead of me, sometimes considerably. I won't complain about any kind of boost, since Nin's already a competitive damage dealer and if these JA's are good enough, Ninja could become exceptional.

One of my main problems in dealing a whole lot of damage is my responsibility in the first voke (which is fine, its part of my job). I don't want to be an MP sponge, so if I am left with a long Ni timer I will cast ichi's. Since I do deal a good amount of damage, after the first voke I tank the majority of the time, which costs me damage potential. With the enmity reduction in the new JA, perhaps I will be able to voke early and then distribute hate more evenly among damage dealers so less ichi casting for all. Really we will have to see the JA's in action to determine their potential.

Lastly, I made myself a stack of manji shurikans the other day to mess around with and macroed a full RACC / RATT build for shurikan tossing between katana attacks. As stated previously, the DPS numbers on shurikans are misleading. It took about the equivilant of 2 attack rounds to throw a shurikan and recover, the shurikan did less damage than 2 katana swings. Even if shurikans were free, they aren't a viable option at the moment in merit parties. (I've played around with them on Kirin some - They are actually pretty decent with bard / cor support on high defense mobs)

[Amastacia]

a good Nin would have no problem keeping up with damage in the majority of merit parties.

Strictly speaking, this is true, but only because the majority of merit parties are full of badly-geared idiots, if you're looking purely at volume.

That's sort of like saying Michael Schumacher could put in a faster lap at a track in a Miata than most people could in M3s. While it's certainly true, put Lewis Hamilton behind the wheel of the M3, and see what happens.

I won't complain about any kind of boost, since Nin's already a competitive damage dealer and if these JA's are good enough, Ninja could become exceptional.

NIN really isn't a competitive damage dealer, and these JAs aren't going to change that, sadly.

Sure a good NIN beats a bad 2h DD, but get equal gear/skill on both DDs and NIN loses every time. A Kikoku only closes the gap. Give the 2h DD a relic too, and NIN falls right back behind.

slightly off topic... was not so long ago Pld were left out of stuff due to nin. So when it reverses we have Pld being ok and nin not so good people gripe. I guess it is expected since when Nin were the choice Pld griped as well. My personal preference when i leveled blm pre-cop and even during was Pld tank. They could keep hate off me better. I cant even count as high as the exp loss i had from shitty Nin tanks. I'll admit sometime was my mistake for going chernobyl but mostly was due to lazy, cheap nin.

The PLD updates began about this time in 2006. Hardly "not so long ago". Within a year further adjustments and change in player mindset had PLD the preferred choice. So that's about 2 years of PLD > NIN now.

And let's be honest, for the first several months after release, most of the omgwtfbbqNINs were JP. So really, there were about 2 years of NIN > PLD, followed by a year of adjustment where it started sliding the opposite way at a varying rate based on server/LS, followed by about 2 years of PLD > NIN.

And the only reason that NIN was so omgwtfbbq back in the old days is melees were underutilized and undergeared, and people didn't believe PLD could tank without /WAR. If PLD/NIN had become mainstream sooner (even in a less-capable form), NIN's era would've been even shorter.

[Roree]

soooo Nin > Pld then Nin = Pld then Nin < Pld and now update to maybe switch it some....

when i said "awhile ago" i didn't mean a month or so... i meant "A W H I L E A G O" semantics aside i am pretty sure people know when pld where whiny and now we now when nin are whiny....

i am sure nin will be on top again then pld then nin then pld then nin.... blah blah blah. Overall i think with how frequently people change their minds its not uncommon to flip flop around.

[TummieGaruda]

It wouldn't hurt if there were actual throwing WS. Not that people would really go mad with the throwing spam, but if there were good throwing weapon skills that did fairly good damage, why not? Would at least bring some usage to the throwing skill, without totally breaking the bank.

Ninja tool expertise should also factor in for shuriken.

I think there are a few challenges with creating throwing weaponskills.
There are 14 jobs with native throwing skill, of which NIN has A- of course and the next best skill/job is PUP with C+. They could just make the weaponskills exclusive to NIN allowing access to certain WS's if subbed. Another issue is separation of consumed vs returnable. They could make weaponskills work for both or separate them into two different WS that corresponds to which throwing item you have equipped similar to arrow vs bullet (Sidewinder vs Slugshot).

SE would also need to create cheaper crafting alternatives to shurikens that give the same damage amount, and maybe a new ability that slightly increases delay but gives a ranged acc bonus and a recycle type trait for consumable throwing weapons.

[TummieGaruda]

It wouldn't hurt if there were actual throwing WS. Not that people would really go mad with the throwing spam, but if there were good throwing weapon skills that did fairly good damage, why not? Would at least bring some usage to the throwing skill, without totally breaking the bank.

Ninja tool expertise should also factor in for shuriken.

I think there are a few challenges with creating throwing weaponskills.
There are 14 jobs with native throwing skill, of which NIN has A- of course and the next best skill/job is PUP with C+. They could just make the weaponskills exclusive to NIN allowing access to certain WS's if subbed. Another issue is separation of consumed vs returnable. They could make weaponskills work for both or separate them into two different WS that corresponds to which throwing item you have equipped similar to arrow vs bullet (Sidewinder vs Slugshot).

SE would also need to create cheaper crafting alternatives to shurikens that give the same damage amount, and maybe a new ability that increases ranged acc and gives a recycle type trait for consumable throwing weapons.

Lastly, I made myself a stack of manji shurikans the other day to mess around with and macroed a full RACC / RATT build for shurikan tossing between katana attacks. As stated previously, the DPS numbers on shurikans are misleading. It took about the equivilant of 2 attack rounds to throw a shurikan and recover, the shurikan did less damage than 2 katana swings. Even if shurikans were free, they aren't a viable option at the moment in merit parties. (I've played around with them on Kirin some - They are actually pretty decent with bard / cor support on high defense mobs)

The problem is that ranged weapons go thru 3 phases:
1) Delay / 110 = shooting or throwing delay
2) Delay to put the weapon away which is ~1.7 seconds
3) Free phase, you can melee but you cannot shoot or throw again which is about 1.1 second

So in reality, using those shurikens would be:

192/100 + 1.7 + 1.1 seconds or:
4.72 seconds between shuriken throws. You are actually looking at DMG:63 Delay 283 which is ~13.3 DPS.

[Shin Volcano]

NIN suffers the same curse that SMN has, they can't change it's current role without dramaticly reworking how the entire job works, and even then, they will end up making it broke.

The problem with NIN is they are specialzed ranged attackers (mainly because if you have the gill you will notice they do a hell of alot damage with shrukins) and ninjitsu spaming, the issue with these 2 is..they are limited badly, shrukins has no WSs and ninjitsu get's resisted often on anything remotly high level. even if you merit it.

Which most people won't do if they have other jobs. they have to fix these 2 problems, to really help NIN, otherwise they will continue to be in the back seat behide other DDs, no one is going to put to much effort spending millions and lots of time to gear the job only to be next to or slightly behide most dds that don't even do half the effort for better performance.

[Stubwub]

You know what would of been a better update to nin? Change our 2-hour to something like Kagetora's ability.

Imagine it, you instantly get 4 shadows which represent 4 clones that all do damage for 30 seconds. It could be like a ghetto hundred fists.

That would of been an awesome update to Nin. -.-

[Coolmints]

As a regular nin DD in merit party, I don't see Innin acc/critical bonus being very useful since the mob spins a lot and you always want to face the next mob for autotarget.

Now the real question is how much of -enmity you gain from Innin and decay over time. Judging the words from SE that they will adjust it in the future, the enmity down might be unreasonably big (e.g. -50enmity @5min, -40enmity @4min ... -10 @1min.) This is just my speculation. However, if it is somewhere around these values, you would imagine you would very likely never pull hate from other DDs nor getting *snatch morsel* at all in bird camp.

This is in a similar situation when you party with a Yoichi bow/soboro SAM that doesn't pull much hate.

/wishfulthinking